“I’m afraid I haven’t got a new Patience, Colin,” she said. “Ah, the old is better. You must teach me one of your Patiences someday. Violet and I must learn Patience, to occupy the autumn evenings when we’re alone here.” * * * * * Colin was half-inclined to reconsider his plan for sending the menagerie on tour. Just as the lover is happiest when the object of his affection is with him, so dislike and contempt sun themselves in the presence of their derision, for it supplies them with fuel. It was amusing to plant little stinging darts, to speak of drink to Uncle Ronald, to flick Violet with an allusion to their solitary evenings in the autumn, to make everybody uncomfortable with the threat that he would drown himself in the lake, for that reminded them of Raymond. These darts were feathered with his gay inimitable geniality, which charmed and enchanted, with that sunniness that warmed their cold old bones, for so the point stung more smartly. Certainly that allusion to the time when he and Violet would be alone here gave them all something to think about.... Colin, before settling down to the Memoirs again, sent for his butler and the cellar-book, and rather enjoyed the fact that Uncle Robert had been consuming the 1860 port at a steady average of a bottle and a half a day. He was a sodden old brute, of course, but, as drink was all that he cared about, it shewed sense to annex as much as possible of the very best, for he always, it appeared, asked for that memorable vintage. But, though it was an agreeable diversion to look at his tremulous unsightliness of a morning, it did not counterweigh the heavy burden of his presence, and he had better go.... Violet would have to convey that to him, if only for the reason that she had said she would not. Colin thought he had a persuasive device about that....